Puppet making supplies - Leo Brodie

I see a lot of questions regarding where to get supplies on the board and did some hunting on the net for a good site that deals with this essential topic. Leo Brodie's site (mentioned in a few other threads) has great advice at http://home.earthlink.net/~lbrodie/extra/supplies.html

Since were talking about supplies i have a great way to aquire some foam. If your into Foam Puppets. Since foam can be kind of expensive I needed another route to go since money is kind of tight right now. I went to a near by Apholstry shop and asked him if i could have his scraps and he let me have them. Now this foam is probably not the best for heads and stuff like that but what we use it for is the body and the arms. It doesn't look great but if your covering it with material that stuff would work just fine. If your planning on painting it i would use the stuff from a fabric store. We did buy some of the nice foam for when we wanted to paint them. But now we have foam just about everywhere in the house we have so much of it. To the good thing about the foam from the upholstry shop is if your not really making them proffesionally or just want to demonstrate. For me the stuff works fine.

When I made my first attempt puppet I went to a store called clark rubber here in Australia and they had lots of offcuts and I got 2 very large pieces for about $15 AUD or less and I still have heaps left. I'm not sure if its the proper type for puppets but I'm not sure if they even sell proper puppet making foam. It works well and is very good for experimenting with like I did.

Asking an upholstry shop for scraps is a great idea. You can also ask them about upholstry suppliers in your area (they might be willing to give you contact info if they know you're not competing with them). These places often charge 1/3 what fabric stores do. Here in Toronto if the fabric stores charge $20 for a piece of foam chances are you can get it from an upholstry supplier for $5 or less. Some will do small orders and some won't.